


The Hollow Flesh

by lucius_complex



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Deathfic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mortality, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Thor was crowned king, his first act was to punish Loki – with permanent mortality. But in one final bid of compassion did the new king of Asgard work out a deal with The Avengers, and with Tony Stark in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

**  
**1

His eyes burned all day, and all night.

They think it’s the flesh that hurts, once-immortal sinews now flayed of magic and godhood.

 _Flayed._ His soul, separated from its source.

Cast out into darkness, not once but twice. Even that migardian myth these humans encumbered themselves with, the archangel  _Lucifer;_ even _he_ had not suffered a second exile. Nor had everything been taken from him in this manner.

Wrenched from him, yae, even onto the husk. His own flesh, they had taken from him.

That his brother King had taken. 

These new eyes, how they burned; forced tears he would not have shed except by involuntary means past false lashes, onto false skin. Skin not his own. _Migardian_ skin. Vile, and he is a carcass wrapped up in vileness.

A carcass that _Allfather_ Thor had wrought from his step-brother’s bones and _dared_ to call compassion.

A most _tender_ exile, the new king of Asgard had said, compared to death. A permenant, aye, yet peaceful prison term in which to reflect upon his sins.

Ah, but how they _burned_ him, these eyes from which adequete sight is scarcely visible.

Time ticked away. A dreary constant pulse in his brain that kept him from sleep. Knock-knock-knock, imminent death approaches. He could feel the passage of time like a withering thing within him. His heart knocked about within its cage of ribs, pleaded for release.

A human lifespan now remained to him. Sixty migardian years perhaps, where he once had thousands untold, and scarcely half of that of any use. Where he was once Loki, whom Fate herself once courted; now he is vile _, rotting flesh_. The stink of his own useless, decaying body clogged his nostril, stuttered his lungs, and when first they had brought him down to the mortal’s earth he had spent days in darkness, dry retching even when there was nothing left; attempting to pull out the offensive tubes of liquid they stuck into his arms.  Scream he did, the first few days, twisted and clawed and attempted to swallow his own tongue; fought and bit and thoroughly became the beast he had been reduced to, until they stuck him full of needles and strapped down his arms and drugged him to the gills.

*

The shock of bruises that could no longer be healed with a thought, those purple poison flowers upon his skin; they made him afraid, and Loki found himself in constant battle with himself. How afraid he was of himself now, the strange moist tenderness of his lungs, the brittle stick-like quality of his wrists. Everything made to be broken. Everything made to be snapped like twigs.

Much later he learned that his prison was in Stark Tower, a place specially constructed and sealed away from prying eyes. Yet another glass cage from the migardians who _never,_ ever learn. Foolish as ever are Thor’s quibbling pet humans. They cannot see that the real cage his loving brother constructed is Loki’s own flesh. One from which he will never escape.

The lights were always unbearable. And the shell of his new body – unbearable. Everywhere is sensation. Everywhere is ceaseless, urgent, _useless_ noise.

In the rare moments when Loki was able to drift off, he has time to think that his prison is at least, mercifully cold.

*

Weeks; and his new migardian body recovered with its own unhurried, pathetic pace. The wires and tubes are removed, and Loki knew better than to do such an obvious job of attempting suicide. He ceased his struggles, and dutifully ate the trays placed before him. He learnt how to use the shower they provided, to smear cleaning agents against his skin and stand over the narrow waterfall and close his eyes and _forget,_ sometimes for hours, until they sent someone in to tear him away from his brief oblivion. After shower he stared with numb bemusement for the rest of the day at the puckered skin on his hands and picked blindly at them, tearing bits of translucent, silky scales and examining their swirl and whorls.   

He did not know how much pressure his skin took before yielding to tears and grazes, so the first few weeks was an exercise of scratching and picking and chewing taken too far, mouthfuls of pasta spat out with blood; long claw marks on his face, hair tugged out too hard with bits of scalp attached. He was bad at noticing pain, and more often than not the pain was a form of secret pleasure and distraction.

The migardian in the iron suit; Stark, soon picked up on his habits and spent a lot of time watching him from the other side of the glass. Loki spent an equal amount of time ignoring him. Stark would bark at the doctors and attendants who saw to Loki’s care, and the next day Loki would find his scratches disinfected, his nails filled to invisible tips, and his wild hair trimmed away from his eyes.

After that they brought him a menu, a television set; stacks of migardian books.

Nobody has told him why he was placed here and what sentence he served; nobody told him if this idling is what he would be doing with the rest of his unnaturally shortened life. Such explanations were not necessary, because Stark’s fancy glass cage is not the real punishment, and the humans were just fools, a tool of his king brother’s.

They were just Thor's short-lived, human hammers.

*

There was no sleep to be had in this new form, only periods of unconsciousness. There was no such balm.

No oblivion for him, because _he would not forget,_ brother.

*

‘Hey, Reindeer Games.’

It seemed a natural thing for this body’s breathing to want to hitch. This mortal body is _made_ for fear and grovelling – a response system so primitive that its first reaction to any sort of surprise is fear, and Loki wrested with it daily. Hourly even. He does not know how humans achieved any sort of civilization at all, with such a constant and compulsive stream of knotting and unraveling within their minds. In his more cognizant hours he could even see the humour of it; it was certainly one way to keep a god from mischief.

Stark seemed restless today. He stood rocking on his heels at the edge of the glass, with eyes that flitter with a thousand fragmented thoughts.

‘You blink a helluvalot when you read. Do you need eyedrops or something?’

Loki turned another page in silence, and from the peripheral of his eyes watched as Stark paced agitated circles beyond the glass, as if he was the one locked behind a cage.  

‘We’re going to get a second opinion from Bruce tomorrow because I think you need glasses, Reindeer Games.’

Stark did not need to come down here to speak his thoughts, he knew. The man is a natural voyeur and a paranoid and controlling one at that, and Loki knew that the presence of his invisible JARVIS permeated every brick of his cage. 

As to why the man wanted to be noticed by his prisoner, the ex-god could guess not.

*

Meekly, he allowed himself to be talked down to and his eyesight to be ‘tested’, and was given a piece of glass wrapped around metal for his pains, to place before his eyes.

Stark was there, his presence a deliberate thorn by his side, reminding him of Thor’s absent one. He spoke only to the monster, a migardian who in human form has gentle hands and a carefully banked rage behind his eyes that instantly recognised the same creature in Loki.

Banner, the monster’s hidden form turned to Stark at the door and said; ‘You must tell Thor to take him back.’

Stark snorted. ‘He’s one of us now. Human. He won’t escape without his magic.’

Loki flinched against his words. A physical blow. Glass and metal cut into his palms, offering a bittersweet relief, and he continued working them into his hands whilst his keepers spoke in urgent whispers.

Stark finally won the argument with ‘I’ve promised Thor to give it my best shot. So I’m going to give it my best shot.’

The monster is not convinced, but seemed to relent. ‘Just remember that his sharpest weapon is not his magic, Tony. It’s his mind, and it’s a mad one.’

Stark saw his pet monster out before returning to bandage his hand without saying a word. A rare and sweet silence, from such a foul-smelling fool.

The day after that, he dragged Loki to have his eyes surgically repaired and tasered him when he struggled.

*

Perhaps Stark collected pet monsters, for he spent a suspicious amount of time in Loki’s company after that, mostly under the pretext of educating him to a migardian way of life.

Loki supposed it _is_ his right – after all, Stark had an affinity for staring at screens, and was his glass cage not Stark’s latest screen? Is it not a sweet delight to tame a creature greater than one, to bring it down to heel and bridle it like a common beast? 

After several months he is released to other rooms, rooms with walls instead of glass, rooms with a library attached, so that Loki may while away the rest of his life picking up knowledge he will never put to use.

He is not so foolish as to think that the new walls meant privacy, so much as the illusory comfort of it. Loki would not bother to remind Stark that he was once god of such tricks.

Ah, but if only you could see how your human pets pity a god, brother. See how they think such paltry measures would appease the great injury done to him, Loki, once a living god and prince of two realms, now reduced to _this_. See how he now spent his days, reading until tears leaked from swollen eyes; or curled upon tangled sheets staring at a spot on the wall, opening his mouth only to shovel in the food they give him.

*

He’s cut off. Blind. Even his skin is blind.

Mortals feel _nothing._

*

Desperation- Loki thought he had known it. Had thought he knew the taste of shape of it against his tongue over the burn of those envious centuries.

He had known _nothing_.

The desire to cease this miserable existence was constant and hot in his veins. It murmured seductively in his head like running water, like a beckoning pool.

It would be so easy. All this liquids and gasses, all this soft flesh and brittle, bird-like bones. They _think_ they could stop him if they wanted to. He could swallow his tongue. He could pull out the veins on his wrists with his fingernails. 

But not like this. Not for him an exit with so little, for he is Loki of Asgard, no matter what they do to him, and he would leave whole worlds burning in his wake.

*

Stark was the only one who attempted any effort to talk to him, and did not seem to require or care for a response. Sometimes he chattered like a bird. Other times his gaze was dark and full of accusations. 

Even with his eyes closed he could see the way Stark watched him from doorways, standing in pools of shadow, standing in pools of harsh white light.

Stark was always standing at the precipice of some doorway. _Wanting_ to be seen.

But he never stepped a foot out of line.

*

His one bright spot is how his presence tore Earth’s mightiest superheros down the centre. Even without the Chitauri sceptre or his immortal powers, there are some things no one can take away from him.

_Chaos._

The day Stark raised his hand against his shield brothers and punched Hawkeye in the face was also the day he brought the bottles from the bar crashing down and trashed his lab. Loki had listened to the muffled shouting and delighted in the music of destruction; he'd stood up from his chair with an almost gleeful anticipation, when an enraged Stark had walked in and split his face and lips open without preamble. Loki spat blood, and did not raise his arms against the fists that rained upon him, and tried not to laugh when the remaining Avengers hurried in to pull the raging human off him.

‘Even when you’re a non-magical piece of _shit_ with no powers you’re somehow tearing my team apart,’ Stark roared at him, and only when their gazes locked for the first time did Loki finally see the guilt lying there. And deeper than that, the swollen desire. The hot, liquid anger that was almost akin to hunger. 

Stark did not come out of his lab for days after his outburst, and Loki waited for his lips to heal, and smiled.

*


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

  
 

 

2

Time passes unchecked. The days bled into each other, each as unremarkable as the one before. He has read himself through several libraries, knew more of midgard’s tremulous history and narratives than he ever cared to. He could see Stark’s trust in him, grown from errant weed into a bed of flowery moss that spreads itself everywhere; too pretty to pluck, at least for the moment.

Stark was clever, for a human. He knew the art of making a bargain, knew Loki would find it hard to turn down a game of wits, limited as his forms of diversions are. Knew that Loki’s starved brain would fain claw out of its skull in a bid for something, anything to keep itself engaged.

Stark was devious for a human, Loki had to give him that; as the walls of his self-imposed isolation, the armour of rage and pain the ex-god had built around himself crumbled before Stark’s patient, measured bribes, the attention he paid him.

So he received better books for good behaviour. Knowledge of science in exchange for that of magic. Handfuls of borderline-illegal sleeping pills in exchange for stories of Asgard’s political machinery.  

_Sunlight._

Soon, the freedom of an entire floor; although only on days the other Avengers were not around.   

It wasn’t the rewards Loki craved, and they both knew it. It was the game itself, it was _someone_ to play them with, and each night Loki swallowed his hard-earned pills with the bitter knowledge that he would _always_ _need_ to have someone on the other side of the board.

That no matter how much he denied it, this vexatious dependency would always come back to undo him.

He _needed._ Needed to know he was not out there, making his moves against a pitiless universe alone. He needed an opponent. A witness to _himself._  

Such was the simple truth of Loki Laufeyson. Such was his secret; the great shame he hides.

The truth of his ever failing self-sufficiency, each time striking out alone and always falling somehow, and oh, he was _bitter_ for it.

*

Had Thor erased his memories, he would not be like this-

He clutched the sheets to himself and turned and turned and _turned_ , both in body and thought. His eyes rolled in their sockets, could never be still, even when closed.

Live another day. Live to _hate._

Live to remember Thor’s betrayal.

*

He pushed for more freedom, and received it. He pushed ever more, and felt the line shift minutely before his feet.

Time passed on skittering, spider’s feet, and he felt the shape of each footprint upon him, clear as a bell.

Loki was once a god, for whom time did not pass. Now it is all he can feel.  

*

Almost every night for a week now, there is a tap dance of light beneath his door. They weaved in and out of shadows, crossing several times before coming to stand before his room. Then they would move away, only to return. Moved away again, and then come back. Moved away. Came back. They tapped out a message that filed him with wide-eyed bewilderment the first time he saw it, and subsequently with scorn.

Stark never knocked, because he is a coward first and an Avenger second, but he does not mind, because Loki knew Stark as he knew himself.

Stark would not stray far from a source of temptation, and it would only be a matter of time before he reached out for it, having convinced himself that the price was within his means.

In this they were both alike.

*

With all the rule-breaking going on under their nose, it was a miracle that none of the other Avengers suspected, leaving him to form conclusions that the team was not as united or as caring of each other’s lives as they seemed. Stark himself has always seen removed from the society of his fellow humans, preferring to surround himself with his own devoted, semi-sentient toys, and was as bunkered down in times of peace as most would be at times of war.

Aye, the mortal harboured his own hostile paranoias about his fellow men; so much so that there were days Loki wondered if Stark’s fixation on him was simply due to his non-human state.

*

His favourite game soon became how many lies he could get Stark to tell his other pet Avengers before the human finally retaliated and curtailed his freedom. Whenever one of them played till zero, they simply started all over again, from the beginning.

On days he felt Loki had gone too far or wrought too much harm - including self-harm, Stark would not be above physical violence, and Loki received his blows with something akin to gratefulness. Something that almost bordered on welcome. On desire.

He repaid Stark these favours with sweet agony, waiting for the velvet drape of twilight to cloak his skin in shadows before pushing his blankets off and fanning his fingers all over the contours of his own body, paying particular attention to the bruises or cuts he’d earlier sustained from Stark’s trashing. Taking himself in hand and giving Stark the performance he craved; training him to respond a certain way to Loki, to look out for certain things, dream of certain things.

Took him to the brink, and no more.

In the mornings he counted the fresh violet circles that bloomed around Starks dark eyes like the widening rings of a bark, and thought; _my seed is growing._

*

Bitterness, as it turns out, is not a sting. It is nothing so clean and clear as mere _pain_.

Thus did he learn of Thor’s many visits to midgard; nay, to this very tower. That his dear brother had come often, to drink and make merry with his pet Avengers _mere floors_ above Loki’s own prison.

But never once to look upon him, Loki.

In the early days he had raged. Was he afraid to look upon what he had wrought with his new powers? Would he not come to gloat, was he _ashamed?_ But Loki knows his brother, and Thor knew not shame, not beyond the certainty that it could be put right with a few trifled words.

Bitterness - it is a sour, acid taint of bile and rust. It is a _soft_ thing _,_ which smothered but unnoticeably.

Always had he repeated the same mistake time and again, thinking that Thor could do no worse upon him, find no other way to further abase Loki and rip out his pride. Always he underestimated his brother as he does now, sitting stately in his prison surrounded by his _new books_ and his _bartered prizes_ as the sharp teeth of truth did sink their fangs into him and poured their poison into his veins, there to spread under his skin like one of Stark’s bruises, trapped.

_Trapped._

Each trip that Thor made, each time he came and went with no word for his forgotten brother was as new layer of toxic oil painted upon his skin.

Bitterness has teeth. But it sits on the skin as softly as silk.

*

Unable to take his anger out on those he wished, he turned to killing animals. Quietly, spuriously, surreptitiously. A strangled cat. A bird shot out of the air with a stone. It kept his reflexes honed and comforted him as nothing else could. Even if the creatures died relatively quickly he tore them apart with his bare hands. The more blood the better, to wash off the pale helplessness of these impotent hands. He muttered into these rituals, drew useless runes upon the floor and his own body that would no longer work.

After that he would wash the floors carefully, buried the carcasses. Always he ate their beating hearts, eyes darting upwards, certain to catch at least one hidden camera angle. Certain to smirk. 

He knew that Stark must know. Sometimes, if the mood pleased him, he would give Stark a particularly gruesome show of it before finally allowing the beast in his hands to breathe its last.

All these boundaries and more he pushed, and still he saw the careful desire in Stark’s eyes, and not a toe out of line.

*

One day he contrived his escape, just as he knew he would. A opportunity. A careless attendant. A fork jammed into the eyes of his favourite nurse. By the time he escaped Loki had been mortal for years, a quiet drifting ghost who had made no trouble and spoken but a handful of words, and his keepers had become lax in their duty.

As he knew they would.

The Avengers were out fighting their latest villain, but he is certain that Stark would be alerted by JARVIS and blow everyone off to track him down. He had no doubts that Stark had somehow laid his clumsy, proprietary claim on Loki as _his_ prisoner, would burn with rage and responsibility at the news.

Loki ran. The outside world closed down on him; buildings loomed, monster vehicles screamed in his wake. He has only a few hours at best before they catch him, and he needed to find the correct people for his task without ever having seen one before.

The symptoms apparently, were easy enough to disguise.

Thus he could not believe his luck (his fate) when he stumbled past an alleyway, and then doubled back and goes in. The stink of ripe, unwashed bodies assaulted his nostril, a morass of filth and decay and beady eyed men in various states of gross negligence.

Behold the true shape of midgard.

They were _perfect._

*

The first two men were easy to persuade. They raped him with glee, prepared him with spit that stank of sewer water and disease and fucked him wide open, each thrust a cut that split him further down the seams like an offering of blood-soaked fruit. They rammed their cocks down his throat and beat him black and blue and then presented him to the rest of their kind with all the magnanimity of one fellow patrician to another.

The rest came forward quite eagerly after that, inspected and prodded at him like a piece of meat. Loki didn’t have time to waste however, so after the fourth, or fifth he begun to shove them away and picked the next one of his own volition; whoever had more sores and more wounds, whoever was more racked with coughing or seemed more crazed, whatever infections that manifested in the mind as well as the body.

The last one he dragged into the public toilet and made him stand against the wall as he impaled himself on its diseased, warted cock; driving himself in repeatedly, hissing at the pain and bringing himself off in a frenzy. He encouraged the human filth to dig his nails onto his face and throat, and when the creature finally shuddered its release Loki turned around and yanked its head forward with a fist full of hair and smashed it against the wall with all his strength, repeatedly, until the tiles are bright with red and the skull in his hands have turned soft. Only then did he allow himself to half-skid, half-sit upon the filthy toilet floor, and stare unseeing at the red scrawl of filth blooming on the tiles.

He thought then of the woman he had once called mother, who could weave from of her eternal loom the learned murmurs of fate, prophesise upon the patterns of constellations that spun out beneath her gentle fingers.

She had seen this then, and kept her silence - and those same fingers from the loom had pushed back his hair and laid a thousand gentle blessing upon his forehead. Loki could now read of his own ending on that stained toilet wall, on the wet flower of blood with its delicate petals dripping spiderweb-thin lines upon the floor and pooling under his shoes before emptying down the drain with soft, trickling sighs.

Loki can read his own death, feel himself emptying into that drain; Thor had torn away his godhood and left him here as an empty husk, but now Loki had put it right; he’s torn off _everything else_. He’d washed himself clean of himself, and he listened to the sounds of _Loki_ being poured down the drain, L-O-K-I, like pieces of runes torn apart and carried with the trickling paean and diluted current of blood down, down and ever down-

Until he finally felt emptied, and within that emptiness, a profound sense of peace.

Absently he bit his tongue and licked the blood from his hand.

Stark should find him within minutes.

*

Stark finds him, and punches him with Ironman’s fist, tearing his lips with metal gauntlets.

‘You want to die so bad? Because I can do you that favour, all you have to do is ask.’

Loki simply gazes at him, blood dripping out of his hair and a half smile on his broken lips until Stark punches him again.

‘What do you want, Loki? What is it you truly _want?_ You want to see your bother; is that what it’s all about? _Speak!’_

He spits out the mouthful of blood and wipes the rest on the back of his hand; he pulls himself up despite the way his head clouds over with white haze and the blood runs down his naked legs. It is pointless effort, for his thighs tremble so violently he sinks back down again, kneeling in the muck, in front of Stark with his hair plastered and his head bowed.

Kneeling in front of Stark, who trembles before him. Poor, stupid Stark, who seems to _grieve so._

They drag him back into the glass prison. The books are left behind.

*

That same night Stark stood at the precipice of his glass cage again, plastered and stinking of whiskey and this time Loki roused himself; allowed the sheets to fall from his torso, to pool like a milky waves against his hips. He displayed the trophy case of cuts and laceration newly acquired, traced every blemish against his fingertips and exhaled raggedly through the lust that clogged his throat - and he kept it up until Stark unravelled like so much yarn behind his prison glass and disabled the security with shaking fingers and finally, _finally_ entered his cage, footsteps slow and reluctant until Loki reached out and dragged him down upon the sheets.

He locked gaze with Stark as two duelling partners might, each hypnotized by the other. He parted his lips and his thighs and drew the covers away from the tender, poison flowers throbing upon his skin, a bouquet of flaws he had spent years in training the mortal to desire; and Stark's eyes are filled with tears and helpless want, his breathing hitching with lust each time he pressed his trembling fingers into a wound and elicited a flinch or cry from Loki's torn lips.

Just as Loki had taught Stark to love his broken god, to want him most in this state of waste.

Stark, he soon discovered, was a most devoted and ardent acolyte. In this one thing Loki realized he had achieved a great success, for Stark is magnificent in his worship. Perhaps the mortal could have helped Loki keep his own disappointments at bay, for he was strong of soul, steel-tipped and brutal of intention like Thor, but no simpleton. Perhaps Stark could have kept Loki from the darkness of himself, had they not met  too late, years after Loki’s soul was already unsalvageable. 

Stark took him with so much tenderness, it was like cresting a wave; and it filled Loki with an unbearable longing to let go; to simply cling to Stark and allow the tide to carry him where it might.

But he would not accept such trifling clemency. He would not see his last plans undone, for he was  _Loki_ , once immortal of Asgard and Jötunheimr; burdened with glorious purpose - and he would have his revenge.

Loki closed his eyes as Stark breathes his name upon the venom-sharpened bones of his ribs, and he _hates._

*

Three months and nothing. No one spoke to him or came to his cell. No one came to vent their displeasure. Stark no longer came into his cell, from his own choice or because he is forbidden, Loki could not tell. Perhaps Stark was already dead, although based on his meager readings Loki would not expect the disease to take him so fast.

He examined his skin with fascination every day, waiting for symptoms to show, but there is none.

AIDS, the midgardian doctors had called it.

He heard that the monster, Banner, has been working on a cure. He heard how his loving brother, his _king_ who had left him here to rot, who would not see him; is presently here. Had rushed down with Asgard’s finest healers and sorcerers in an attempt to treat his shield brother, the man whom Loki had infected with a disease that has no cure.

How all of Asgard must curse his name, and even though he cannot be there to hear it, the imagined sound of it is sweet.

Let Thor see what he has done, and let his heart be ripped to shreds on the burden of knowing he had inadvertently sent one of his pet humans to their doom.

Loki celebrated the news of his devastation by peeling long lines of impotent victory runes on his arms.  

*

Stark stood before him, sleeping clothes and tousle-haired and looking as if he hadn’t slept in months. The skin hung off his bones, eyes bruised with the shadow of encroaching death.

He held a device in his hand which disabled every alarm and lock in Loki’s cell.

‘Get up,’ Stark said shortly, ‘-and get out. You’ve got your revenge, Reindeer Games, what more do you want?’

Loki roused himself carefully from the bed as Stark approached him, suddenly wary. The expression in Stark’s eyes are wild; wild and mad with pain and shocking in their similarity to what Loki saw in himself when he still had a mirror. It is a face that spoke of naught but death and ashes.

A death sentence had made Anthony Stark striking in ways Loki could not put to words. His eyes are bleak, empty as the night and _beautiful._ They were so hollowed out they might as well contain hour-glasses, instead of pupils.  

Stark's voice scraped upon the delicate nerves of his throat like raw glass.

‘I know you’re not going to rest till you find out, so I’ve come down to tell you. You broke him. You've broken Thor’s heart. Oh, you’ll _die_ here, Loki, with all your vengeful glory and in horrible pain, but you get the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere out there your immortal brother is going to live with an eternity of regret for sending you down to earth, thinking you'd be able to see a second chance for what it was.’

‘So I’m going to release you,’ Loki drew a sharp breath, flinched away as Stark violently yanked the covers away.

‘Get up and walk. You’ve _won,_ Reindeer Games. Now tell me how good it feels.’

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an Epilogue, which will be coming up in a couple of hours. Thank you for your patience.


	3. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE: TWO YEARS LATER**

3  

The light is sharp as needles, even from behind swollen lids.

‘Pet-‘ he slurred, _‘that you?’_

Silence, although he heard the sound of something being dragged into the cabin; a protracted cursing at the door.

Something was off about the whole thing, but he was desperate, he needed another hit. Another anything.

‘Don’t be mad, Pet, _comeon.’_

Instead the lights just got brighter, and Peter left the doors ajar as he came in before proceeding to stomp around, cranking the windows wide open. A cold draft rushed through the room, and Loki let out a string of curses.

The air in the cabin had been stale and sour, but at least it had been _warm._

‘-de fuck are ye ‘doin,’ he whined, tightening the towels in his grip. ‘I’ll _die.’_

‘Some brave new world eh, Reindeer Games?’

Loki stilled. That voice was too strong and too bright for this room. For this _life._

He managed with difficulty to work half an eye open, and blinked until the blurred figure of a man came into view against the precipice of his door.

_‘Pet-‘_

But it wasn’t Peter. It’s _Stark._

‘I killed you.’

‘I’m a pretty good looking corpse then,’ Stark snorted as he walked in, booted feet kicking away the rubbish blocking his path.

Loki turned away and attempted to burrow back into the dark oblivion of sleep, hoping the vision before him would disappear -just another nightmare from a ceaseless spring pool of it-

But as ever in his life, the fates were contrary and loved nothing more than to prolong his suffering.

He felt Stark’s weight dent the cushion beside him. The hands that wiped his face with a warm, wet cloth were gentle, but unmovable, even when Loki attempted to swot them away.

 _‘Leave_ me be.’

Stark threw the filthy rag on the debris-littered floor and pulled out a fresh one from his knapsack. ‘Is it _still_ worth it?’

‘Git _lost.’_

He should have known Stark would be as stubborn and as contrary as a mule, because what the man did instead is pull a foldable butler out of his bag, and Loki heard the noise of containers being unpacked and laid out.

Then deft hands caught him by his forearms and dragged his head onto a very warm lap.

‘Stop struggling,’ Stark grunted, ‘your eyes are bloody infected; I’m just cleaning them so you can see again, you fool.’

He continued to struggle, well aware of its futility but unwilling to do less, until Stark finally breathed a huff of irritation and sandwiched his forearms between his thighs, effectively sitting on them.  

_‘Fuck you- STARK-’_

‘Why are you doing this to yourself? Your brother’s gone back to his alien rock and his alien people a long time ago, and he’s not coming back. There’s nothing left to prove. Nobody’s here to see you, Reindeer Games. Nobody but me.’

Loki opened his mouth and essayed to speak; there were  _things_ – there were whole elegies that he wished to _snarl_  up at the stupid mortal, but his tongue was so swollen and the effort so tremendous that his head ended up falling helplessly back on Stark’s lap.

‘Need a hit,’ he finally grunted, giving up. ‘Gimme one and I’ll give you a BJ.’

‘You’re really not in a position to negotiate BJs stinking like you do, Reindeer Games. And there will be no _hits.’_

After several moments of Stark’s _painfully_ tender ministrations Loki is finally able to peel back his sticky, burning eyes and look up at a face made beautiful with time and a set of watchful, too-old eyes. Stark had aged; now he sported a skull cap and closed-cropped, if rather scruffy beard. There were thick lines of wrinkles around his clear brown eyes, and his expression as he looked down upon Loki was both resigned and slightly sardonic.

He looked at Stark for the first time since the night he'd broken Loki out of his glass cell. _Years_. He should try to see what he could charm or salvage off the man; money preferably. Stark was _rich,_ if he remembered correctly _._ But the only thing that came out instead, the only think he could think of was the question that haunted him most-

‘ _Why?’_

Stark pretended not to understand as he used a swiss army knife to rip apart Loki’s grime-sodden shirt.

‘Really should have done your research better, Reindeer Games, because incurable doesn’t mean you die straight away. You could be here, living in filth for another ten years if you’re unlucky. Although from the look of _this,_ I’d say you were about to get lucky.’

Gentle fingers peeled away the towel that had been stuck to his right thigh for a week, exposing a black and red mess and a rotting smell that made Loki want to gag.

Stark made a noise of disgust. ‘Jesus, you better pray we don’t have to scrape half that leg off. What were you thinking, to mouldy yourself into a lump of cheese? Is that your big plan?’

‘Maybe,’ Loki retorted, because contrariness had so often become all he had. And because he had been reduced to this form; a dumb and simple beast; he merely blinked and slurred again; ‘ _I killed_ you.’

Stark made a face. ‘Yeah well, you tried. I mean you did. I really should be reading you the riot act for that, but then I did go and fuck with the rules, didn't I? And the law of any universe is clear Reindeer Games; you breaks it, you pays for it.’

Stark’s brown eyes, clear as glass, bore down on Loki like a tractor beam. ‘Any of this sounds familiar to you?’

‘We’re _nothing_ alike,’ Loki spat, before letting out a wail of pain as the rubbing alcohol set his leg on fire.

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

The infuriating mortal simply smiled grimly as he continued cleaning the hole in his leg, ignoring Loki’s gasping and writhing. ‘Pepper always said I was either going to die from breaking a law, or from some rare tropical disease. Looks like I won the lottery and bagged both.’

Loki was past caring about Stark’s sermonizing, however.  He thrashed wildly as Stark held him down. The pain was unbearable, a searing flame that cooked his flesh and flayed him with sensations that he’d assumed had long ago been numbed down.

 _‘Shhhhh,_ I’ve got you. It’s going to be ok.’

Stark’s fingers smoothed the lines of his forehead and stroked his hair back, and he could not help the way his lashes fluttered and his head tilted back with greed at the small touch, and for a moment Loki could feel his tenuous hold on his own sanity slip.

_‘Mother-’_

The pained, hungry wail burned its way through the back of his throat and exploded past his lips, and he cringed even as he was too slow, too weak to stop it.

‘Oh, _Loki_ -‘

And then the shame burned.

He didn’t _want_ this tenderness from Stark, so he spat, ‘You would have done me a favour to leave me be, fool mortal. Nurse me to health and I’ll only regain my strength to kill you again.’

Stark simply looked at him and did not deign to change the way he continued to stroke his forehead. ‘You can't kill the same person twice. Well you can, but it wont be so much fun, Reindeer Games.’

And Loki had nothing to say to that.

‘You looked for me,’ he accused bitterly, and it _was_ one. He was angry at Stark for being a puny human and breaking all the rules. For making Loki want things, see symbols in actions that shouldn’t exist.

‘Yeah. Yeah I did.’

Loki did not want _hope_. There was no _place_ in his life for it, no place in all his _preparations_ \- for a man like Tony Stark to come charging in and- and _change everything. Loki didn’t want it,_ and he opened his mouth to tell the man with the sad brown eyes-

But Stark spoke first.

‘I'm human, not stupid. I knew I was just the _messenger._ Hell, I knew it from the start _._ I know you used me, and I think I used you too. But you like playing games, and I have another game for us to play, Reindeer Games. A new one. And this time, I thought we could make it permanent. Which won’t be too long in any case. For either of us.’

Stark was clever, for a human.  He knew the art of making a bargain.

He blinked fresh tears away, struggled to feel his way around the vowels. ‘Those nicknames. Reindeer Games. Why do you call me that.’

‘It started out as a joke,’ Tony sighed. But he offered no additional insights, and Loki needed none.

‘I accept.’

Stark arched an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you want to hear the terms?’

‘No.’

Stark exhaled then, and seemed to fold upon himself.  ‘Well. Good, because I hadn’t actually thought that far. I was thinking of getting us both a hotel room and some clean clothes and some proper medical attention whilst you still have a leg; and then maybe rehabilitation-‘

 _‘Fuckoff_ , _no_. What are you, gunning for upstanding citizen of the year award?’

Stark’s mouth hung opened in shock. ‘You’re right. I can’t believe I said all that.’

Loki’s lips curled into an involuntary smile as the man narrowed his eyebrows.

‘You sure you’re not working more of your mumbo jumbo on me?’

Stark was devious for a human; Loki had to give him that, as the wall of his self-imposed isolation and the armour of his rage crumbled before Stark’s patient, bottomless eyes.

‘I’m not sure, if it isn’t the other way around,’ Loki admitted as he painfully pulled himself to a sitting position, assisted by the man who was once Ironman. Stark hadn’t reply, so Loki turned to face him-

-and found his mouth being pried open by Stark’s lips and burrowing tongue, hungry and searching and blind.

Loki hesitated. Stark had made his move and it was Loki’s turn to stand at the doorway, and he’s not sure if he- he-

He suddenly realised that he doesnt remember Thor anymore. Hasn't thought of Asgard in years.

Loki opened his mouth and kissed back. And kissed back. 

His seed had grown, but its fruit bore no poison, and finally he thinks he can understands the nature of trees.

‘You stink like wet dead dog,’ Stark announced when he finally pulled away.

‘Gimme whiskey and we’ll _both_ stink.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Stark said philosophically as reached down into his backpack and drew out a tumbler which he held up, and they just stayed that way for whole minutes; a frozen tableau that anybody walking past the open door would have laughed themselves sick at.

Looking at each other.  

When he finally reached out to take the offered tumbler, he sees Stark’s mouth quirk, and the calm knowledge of death in his eyes made Loki think him almost beautiful.

‘Come on, Reindeer Games. Let’s get wasted.’

 

[FINI]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: If you're wondering why/how Loki suddenly went and found himself a new temporary speech pattern, its because my headcannon insists that he's a very intelligent guy and knows how to survive in dire environments (except when he doesn't). Ok, clearly he doesn't, but I guess that what Tony's for.
> 
> Writing this fic killed me. It was supposed to be a break from my other fic, but. O well. 
> 
> Me sa get a cookie? :)
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumblr: Lokitini](http://lokitini.tumblr.com/)


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